I’m Calling It Progress

  I was not on my A game the other day. I wasn’t even on my B, C, D, or E game. I was something like maybe on my R game, inching toward S. And so normally what I’d do is throw a torrent of self-care and distraction on it, like go to yoga, go meditate, go play tennis, go call a bunch of people who might be nice to me aka: listen to my various theories about why I feel how I feel and/or share with me why they felt how they felt so I could focus on helping with their stuff rather than mine, which is always so generous of them, to have their own stuff in my presence. Go run up a mountain.

But all that thrashing was not on the menu yesterday. On the menu was date day with Mike before he goes off to some big conference with back-to-back-to-back meetings for several days straight and I turn into summertime stay-at-home-mom with a lot of solo Ax time.

So I was maybe feeling sorry for myself or scared for myself instead of grateful that my husband has a job he loves doing stuff that’s important and meaningful to him and grateful that I can be a stay-at-home mom. I was maybe a little busy pre-missing him and preparing for loneliness, so busy that I almost messed up date day being squirrel-y and off-center.

But I Didn’t. And, to be honest, he helped quite a bit with that. He said, and I heard him say, “I want to go out to lunch.” And we did. He said, and I heard him say, “Let’s play a bit of tennis even though it’s hot.” And we did. We had a great date day. Somehow, instead of me getting all into why I felt only on my S game and trying to feel better before I could have a good time, I paid attention to what my partner was saying he needed and wanted and went with that. And I had a great time.